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Fabrice Hyber (1961) was born in Luçon, France and currently lives in Paris. In the early 1980s Hyber studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nantes. From 1990 onwards Hyber has been making his famous POF's - Prototypes d'Objects en Fonctionnement: the objects are ‘tested’ by an audience, which results in the creation of new meanings or functions.

The work of Hyber centres around mutation, each work is part of a larger ‘work in progress’, nothing has reached its final stage, everything is in a state of motion. The complete oeuvre of Hyber contributes to his research into the endless chains of thought and the different ways in which we communicate.

The exhibition The shape of the words is divided into two parts. The first part contains paintings on which Fabrice Hyber seeks to capture the shape of Eastern, Western and global words. The second part consists of prototypes which are used to attempt to show how the world has been constructed through words. His aim was to study whether there are words that take on the shape of their sound.

During his search for the shape of words Hyber realized that Eastern and Western words are created in two very different ways. Western words consist of syllables that are mechanically put together, whereas Oriental words form in a more organic way; by combining sounds entire words are created.

However, there is a common bond between the two: in the digital world words are split and converted into a numeric value, this binary language consists of 1s and 0s and unifies all language. Fabrice Hyber makes prototypes which enable people to grasp this splitting.

This exhibition is realised with the support of the French Embassy.